SPN Fanfic: Cheer Up, Emo Bear
*glances worriedly at the plot-bunny corral*
There is some seriously weird and random crap trying to jump out of there. Like this. It's definitely crack, but it's not funny so much as emo. So it's creamo?
Posting this unbeta'd before I chicken out. Might alter it or take it down later.
Title: Cheer Up, Emo Bear
Warnings: SPOILERS FOR 4.08. Depressing as hell. Depictions of psychoanalysis. Grim topics.
Crossover: SPN/Die Anstalt*
Characters: Teddy (SPN), Dr. Sock (Die Anstalt), other characters peripherally.
Word Count: 2600-ish words
Disclaimer: So very, very not mine. I just put the words together.
Rating: GEN, mild R (disturbing themes)
Summary: (Kind of an episode tag for 4.08) Teddy needs therapy.
A/N: This involves Supernatural but doesn't involve Winchesters directly. It's crossed over with something most of you will have never even heard of, and it may require kleenex or be excessively maudlin. I cannot think of a single reason why anyone would read this fic, but I'm posting it anyway to get it clear of the corral so other things might have room to hop.
*-"Die Anstalt" is a twisted little flash game where you psychoanalyze unbalanced and mistreated stuffed animals. Really.
-
Cheer Up, Emo Bear
by CaffieneKitty
-
Audrey was sure Teddy's head should be better by now. The teddy bear doctors had removed the lollipops from teddy's head months ago but he was still wearing the band-aids. His owwie should be better.
When she first took his band-aids off a couple weeks ago, his head had looked fine underneath, all better. The next morning he had them back on with white fluff sticking out. She had taken his band-aids off every night this week, and his head looked fine, but each following morning when she woke up, Teddy was on the floor, band-aids stuck back on, tuft of a white cotton-ball sticking out.
This morning he smelled bad again. Not like the bus this time, more like Mom's mouthwash, and Daddy's stinky shaving stuff.
Audrey sighed and reached down for Teddy, pulling his slightly damp body up onto the bed. "Are you ouched in the head again, Teddy? I can ask Mom if she knows how to find the teddy bear doctors, if you want?"
Teddy slumped over sideways and moistened the bedspread.
"Moooom, Teddy's sick!" Audrey called, jumping out of bed and thumping down the stairs, packing her odiferous bear.
-
Teddy remembered Audrey's face, watching the box close, and then he was here. The main room was white and yellow, full of stuffed animals and strange noises; hushed whispers and broad people in white to-ing and fro-ing.
No children.
His head hurt.
-
He doesn't remember how, but he's suddenly taller than Audrey's Dad, or at least he thinks he is; her Dad and Mom have gone away. He finds himself breaking all the toy rules of not letting a person see him move, not letting them hear him talking. Audrey serves tea, and together they talk about things, which of the toys is likeliest to fly the Mars lander, how Jenny at school says she's Audrey's friend but says mean things about her when she thinks Audrey can't hear, and which doll is secretly spying on the others for the Grumpy-Pants Brigade. Teddy has always suspected Annabella of being a little too happy.
There are noises in another room. Audrey doesn't seem to hear them, but Teddy does. They're distracting him from the pressing problems of the tea table. He looks around while Audrey passes cookies and sees a door at the end of the hallway, partly open, where the noises are coming from. A blueish light flickers inside.
He turns away, but still hears the noise.
Teddy woke up again in the room with the round-leaved plant to see Dr. Sock tucking away a shiny thing on a short chain and making notes. His head felt like it should hurt, so he clutched it and rocked for a while.
-
"In your dream-"
"Not a dream."
"Hm." Dr. Sock rumpled her mouth at him.
Teddy sighed and crossed his arms. "Whatever."
"What did you hear?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"The noises, what did you hear?"
"I don't remember."
"Did you go down the hallway and open the door?"
"I didn't- I don't remember."
"I think you do."
_
In the patient's lounge, the turtle kept skipping and resetting his stopwatch. The purple hippo banged a set of blocks together, mouth zippered shut. The sheep twitched and barked. Eyes peered out from a shaking cereal box. A rainbow snake shook the silent rattle on its tail.
Teddy's head hurt. He wondered why he was here, and where Audrey was.
He hoped her parents hadn't gone to Bali again.
-
The voices and light coming from behind the door are more distracting; there's a sound like popcorn. Teddy tries to be a good listener, as all teddies are made to be, but the voices and popping in the other room get louder.
When Audrey gets up for more tea, Teddy leaves the table, navigating his unfamiliar size through the empty rooms of the house to find the glowing box on. The glowing box is where the happy vegetable people live, and where Dora and Diego help the animals, but they aren't there today. Other things are, bad things, and Teddy wants to look away, go back to Audrey, but he can't. The glowing box becomes all Teddy sees, until he feels like it will swallow him, bigger-than-Daddy-size and all.
-
"What your dream is saying, I believe, explains everything." Dr. Sock's mouth curled into a pleased smirk. "Audrey's Mother and Father went away. This happens sometimes with children, their parents go away, or do not otherwise fulfill their roles as a child's protector, but usually it is one parent or the other, and not both. You felt you had to be more for Audrey than just her bear. So in the dream you grew."
"Not a dream," Teddy muttered, glaring down at the xylophone Dr. Sock had placed in front of him.
Dr. Sock ignored his interjection. "You tried to become a bigger bear, to protect Audrey. But there is only so much protection a Kuscheltier, a stuffed animal, can provide. And so in your dream, you are overwhelmed."
Teddy held his head and growled. "It wasn't a dream. I got big. Huge. I don't know how. It wasn't a dream."
"Of course it was a drea-"
"It happened! It was real." Teddy crossed his arms and flopped onto the bed.
"Come now, Teddy," She said, mouth moving slightly out of synch with her strong German accent. "You are a stuffed animal, a child's toy. You do not grow, you stay the same size. Logically, if you think that this happened, this becoming a giant, it must be a dream."
"It wasn't a dream!" Teddy shrieked at Dr. Sock, bunching his paws into fists. "It was real!"
Dr. Sock pulled back a bit, her fabric mouth puckering with concern. "But you must admit that logically-"
Teddy picked up the xylophone and threw it across the room. "I'M A TEDDY BEAR! I DON'T DO LOGIC!"
Dr. Sock nodded. "Ah. Yes. Exactly so."
Teddy tilted his head, then turned his shiny eyes down towards his feet. His head felt like it should itch so he scratched it.
"I think that is enough progress for the day."
-
Teddy scratched at his band-aids. It was funny that they itched now, but this whole place was loopy.
He watched as the attendants brought the turtle back to the main room, hidden deep inside his shell. The thing in the box had come out; it was an alligator, clutching a pillow and looking paranoid. The purple hippo kept banging her blocks together.
The sheep growled. Teddy stayed far away from the sheep.
"You're all frigging nuts," muttered Teddy, scratching his head and wondering why he was here.
-
The glowing box shows him the world, the whole world outside of the house and yard and store and park, the world of grown-ups. He learns words from the glowing box; 'genocide', 'rape', 'molestation', 'wildfire', 'terrorism', 'murder'. Hate and fear and misery. Firelight from villages burning a world away shine off his eyes. People die and kill and die and kill and die.
Audrey is coming.
-
Teddy huddles on the bed, a small ball of traumatized plush.
"What did you see, in the glowing box?"
"Awful things. Fighting, people being mean to each other. Fire. Flood. All over the whole world, grown-ups being mean to each other, being mean to kids. Hurting kids."
"How did that make you feel?"
"It made me mad!" Teddy clenched a stuffed fist on the crisp white sheet of the bed. "It's not nice to hit, and this, they..." Teddy trailed off, remembering things the glowing box had shown that were so much worse than hitting, things he didn't know or want to find the words for. "It made me mad. It made me want to do something about it."
"But you didn't?"
"Audrey said. I'm for tea parties. I'm her bear. So all I could do was tea parties. Mean, bad, rotten things people were doing to each other and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't even try. Tea parties."
"Why did you want to stop it?"
"Because it was wrong! It's bad to hit! It's bad for people to hurt each other!"
"Is that the only reason?"
"...because. I wanted to stop it, so Audrey wouldn't have to- So she..."
"So she would be safe?"
"Yeah. I guess."
"It is a natural impulse, for a teddy bear. You want your child to be safe."
Teddy shrugged. "Of course I do."
"Why do you have a bandage on your head, Teddy?"
-
The hippo had stopped banging the blocks together, maybe they'd taken them away from her. Her zippered mouth was held shut by a safety pin now, and her stubby arms were clamped over it. The turtle had come all the way out of his shell, and was sitting on it now, crying his way through a box of tissues.
Teddy scratched at his band-aids some more and wondered if the toys here all had kids at home like Audrey.
-
Tea parties. People are dying. Tea parties. Audrey is alone. Someone could hurt her if she's alone. She needs to be protected. Tea parties. He wants to make them all stop. The glowing box never stops; he's watched it, all through the night and day, and it never stops. Grown-ups never stop. War never stops. Fire never stops. He has to protect her. He's big now, he can do something. He can.
Tea parties.
Teddy soaks his fluff with the smelly liquid he sees the people in the glowing box drinking. it doesn't help.
-
"Audrey's parents, they came back, yes?"
Teddy nodded. "After a while. They went to Bali, but they came back."
"So they can protect Audrey now. You don't need to."
"I guess," said Teddy, slumping.
"But you still have the band-aids on your head, Teddy."
Teddy scratched his head. "I don't think- Her parents, I don't think they can stop the stuff I saw."
Dr. Sock said nothing.
"I don't think they can protect her from it. Not really."
"And if they can't, then how do you think you can?"
"I don't know," Teddy moaned, slumping forward, paws on his head. "I don't know. My head hurts."
"Do you feel pain?"
"No, of course not," Teddy muttered miserably into his plush knees. "Teddies don't feel pain. But it hurts anyway."
"Why do you think it hurts, Teddy?"
"I don't know!"
-
Teddy sat huddled in the corner under the 'no nooses' sign and watched the turtle - his shell back on but different-colored now - walk to the door. The green light over it flashed and the turtle walked away.
The sheep snarled. Teddy hid his face in his paws and rocked back and forth.
-
Strangers come.
Strangers make Audrey go away. They leave Teddy alone with his bottles and the glowing box.
Audrey's gone. She's out in the world; he can't protect her. He never could.
He doesn't want to see the glowing box anymore. He doesn't want to see Audrey in there. But even after he makes the box shut up, it doesn't. It's in his head, and everything he's seen and heard now features Audrey. Hurt, scared, hurting, angry, dying, killing. He doesn't want to see it, but it won't stop. He can't make it stop.
The glowing box also taught him what a gun does.
He doesn't know how he gets the gun.
He hears the gun fire. He senses the passage of the bullet, smells his own scorched cotton fluff, but the pain he can't feel just gets worse. Everything gets worse.
He can't stop any of it. Audrey is still gone.
-
"You couldn't stop it."
"No."
"Not in the world or in your own mind."
"No. I tried. I..."
"Why do you still have the bandage on?"
"My head hurts. More than anything."
"Why does it still hurt, Teddy?"
"Because I can't stop it. No one can. Her parents can't stop it. They left her alone. I can't protect her, and..."
"You can't keep her safe."
Teddy huddled in misery. "No."
"And you can't keep her from growing up. From becoming a part of that world."
Teddy rocked back and forth. "No. No, I can't."
-
He doesn't know how, but he is his normal size again.
He has to hide it, he has to hide what he did.
He breaks the teddy rules again and thumps down the endless hallway to the bathroom. Clambers up, up to the medicine cabinet, finds the band-aids and cotton balls. He can't find the place he needs to hide, can't find where his head hurts so much. He hears the car pull into the driveway, Audrey's voice. He puts the band-aids as far back on his head as he can reach, padding them with cotton to hide the hole he's sure is there, even though he can't see or feel it.
He has it all trapped inside now, all the bad things from the glowing box. Maybe if he can keep it all trapped in his head, inside himself, Audrey will never know any of it.
He hears the front door open, Audrey's feet on the stairs, and lets himself go inanimate, falling off the bathroom counter down, down...
-
"Audrey's parents went away. You became aware of a wider world; the world of grown-ups. It's a scary, confusing world, one that no toy or child should need to face. You tried to face it, in your dreams."
"It wasn't a...," Teddy slumped on the bed. "Whatever."
"It was an awareness of a wider world, but you are not equipped to deal with these things. You are a child's toy, you support the child. We have seen this a great many times."
Teddy scratched his band-aids and stared at his feet.
"The thing which you have forgotten, is that you are a toy. You are not made or equipped to solve the problems of the world. It is not your destiny."
Teddy snorted. "Yeah. My destiny is tea parties."
"Look beyond the tea, Teddy, to what a tea party is. It is the time you spend with your child. Children have problems, sometimes small problems which seem big to them because they are small, sometimes problems even an adult should not face."
"Don't I know it. You ever see something called 'Dateline NBC'?"
Dr. Sock rumpled her mouth. "What you do, as a teddy bear, is very important. You support the child. The child becomes the adult. And the adult works to solve the problems of the world."
"So..." Teddy tilted his head to the side, thinking, "the mean people in the glowing box... never had teddy bears?"
"It is not so simple as that."
"Then why do they do stuff like that?
"That's not for me to say, nor for you to know. It's too much for such a small bear."
"I was bigger once," Teddy muttered.
Dr. Sock's mouth rumpled into a grimace. "Rather than trying to be a bigger bear to withstand the bigger problems of the adult world, it is your job to be just a small bear, to be the soft thing that your child whispers secrets to, and dries her tears on, to be something that never judges her, something that will always be her friend."
Teddy tilted his head. "Hunh. That's all?"
"You don't need to solve the world's problems. All you need to do is be there for your Kind, your child, when she needs you. That is all there is, and that is the most important duty there can be."
Teddy nodded slowly, and noticed that for the first time since the 'getting big' incident, his head didn't hurt or itch or anything. He reached up and peeled the band-aids and cotton ball from the back of his head and held them in his paw, looking at them quizzically. Bits of his own plush fur stuck to the sticky parts.
Why had he needed these? There was nothing wrong with his head. Not really.
He dropped the band-aids and cotton as he hopped off the examination room bed. Dr. Sock put down her clipboard and watched Teddy as he headed through the room, past the alligator and the hippo and the sheep, to the door with the green light flashing over it, and through.
-
Audrey opened the box, and light flooded in.
"Teddy! You're back! I missed you!"
Teddy flopped against Audrey's shoulder as she squashed him tightly.
He was home, and Audrey was safe - for now, if not forever. Truly, nothing else mattered.
- - -
Post A/N: The playlist for this fic is... bizarre. And contains far more Linkin Park than any teddy bear should listen to.
There is some seriously weird and random crap trying to jump out of there. Like this. It's definitely crack, but it's not funny so much as emo. So it's creamo?
Posting this unbeta'd before I chicken out. Might alter it or take it down later.
Title: Cheer Up, Emo Bear
Warnings: SPOILERS FOR 4.08. Depressing as hell. Depictions of psychoanalysis. Grim topics.
Crossover: SPN/Die Anstalt*
Characters: Teddy (SPN), Dr. Sock (Die Anstalt), other characters peripherally.
Word Count: 2600-ish words
Disclaimer: So very, very not mine. I just put the words together.
Rating: GEN, mild R (disturbing themes)
Summary: (Kind of an episode tag for 4.08) Teddy needs therapy.
A/N: This involves Supernatural but doesn't involve Winchesters directly. It's crossed over with something most of you will have never even heard of, and it may require kleenex or be excessively maudlin. I cannot think of a single reason why anyone would read this fic, but I'm posting it anyway to get it clear of the corral so other things might have room to hop.
*-"Die Anstalt" is a twisted little flash game where you psychoanalyze unbalanced and mistreated stuffed animals. Really.
-
Cheer Up, Emo Bear
by CaffieneKitty
-
Audrey was sure Teddy's head should be better by now. The teddy bear doctors had removed the lollipops from teddy's head months ago but he was still wearing the band-aids. His owwie should be better.
When she first took his band-aids off a couple weeks ago, his head had looked fine underneath, all better. The next morning he had them back on with white fluff sticking out. She had taken his band-aids off every night this week, and his head looked fine, but each following morning when she woke up, Teddy was on the floor, band-aids stuck back on, tuft of a white cotton-ball sticking out.
This morning he smelled bad again. Not like the bus this time, more like Mom's mouthwash, and Daddy's stinky shaving stuff.
Audrey sighed and reached down for Teddy, pulling his slightly damp body up onto the bed. "Are you ouched in the head again, Teddy? I can ask Mom if she knows how to find the teddy bear doctors, if you want?"
Teddy slumped over sideways and moistened the bedspread.
"Moooom, Teddy's sick!" Audrey called, jumping out of bed and thumping down the stairs, packing her odiferous bear.
-
Teddy remembered Audrey's face, watching the box close, and then he was here. The main room was white and yellow, full of stuffed animals and strange noises; hushed whispers and broad people in white to-ing and fro-ing.
No children.
His head hurt.
-
He doesn't remember how, but he's suddenly taller than Audrey's Dad, or at least he thinks he is; her Dad and Mom have gone away. He finds himself breaking all the toy rules of not letting a person see him move, not letting them hear him talking. Audrey serves tea, and together they talk about things, which of the toys is likeliest to fly the Mars lander, how Jenny at school says she's Audrey's friend but says mean things about her when she thinks Audrey can't hear, and which doll is secretly spying on the others for the Grumpy-Pants Brigade. Teddy has always suspected Annabella of being a little too happy.
There are noises in another room. Audrey doesn't seem to hear them, but Teddy does. They're distracting him from the pressing problems of the tea table. He looks around while Audrey passes cookies and sees a door at the end of the hallway, partly open, where the noises are coming from. A blueish light flickers inside.
He turns away, but still hears the noise.
Teddy woke up again in the room with the round-leaved plant to see Dr. Sock tucking away a shiny thing on a short chain and making notes. His head felt like it should hurt, so he clutched it and rocked for a while.
-
"In your dream-"
"Not a dream."
"Hm." Dr. Sock rumpled her mouth at him.
Teddy sighed and crossed his arms. "Whatever."
"What did you hear?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"The noises, what did you hear?"
"I don't remember."
"Did you go down the hallway and open the door?"
"I didn't- I don't remember."
"I think you do."
_
In the patient's lounge, the turtle kept skipping and resetting his stopwatch. The purple hippo banged a set of blocks together, mouth zippered shut. The sheep twitched and barked. Eyes peered out from a shaking cereal box. A rainbow snake shook the silent rattle on its tail.
Teddy's head hurt. He wondered why he was here, and where Audrey was.
He hoped her parents hadn't gone to Bali again.
-
The voices and light coming from behind the door are more distracting; there's a sound like popcorn. Teddy tries to be a good listener, as all teddies are made to be, but the voices and popping in the other room get louder.
When Audrey gets up for more tea, Teddy leaves the table, navigating his unfamiliar size through the empty rooms of the house to find the glowing box on. The glowing box is where the happy vegetable people live, and where Dora and Diego help the animals, but they aren't there today. Other things are, bad things, and Teddy wants to look away, go back to Audrey, but he can't. The glowing box becomes all Teddy sees, until he feels like it will swallow him, bigger-than-Daddy-size and all.
-
"What your dream is saying, I believe, explains everything." Dr. Sock's mouth curled into a pleased smirk. "Audrey's Mother and Father went away. This happens sometimes with children, their parents go away, or do not otherwise fulfill their roles as a child's protector, but usually it is one parent or the other, and not both. You felt you had to be more for Audrey than just her bear. So in the dream you grew."
"Not a dream," Teddy muttered, glaring down at the xylophone Dr. Sock had placed in front of him.
Dr. Sock ignored his interjection. "You tried to become a bigger bear, to protect Audrey. But there is only so much protection a Kuscheltier, a stuffed animal, can provide. And so in your dream, you are overwhelmed."
Teddy held his head and growled. "It wasn't a dream. I got big. Huge. I don't know how. It wasn't a dream."
"Of course it was a drea-"
"It happened! It was real." Teddy crossed his arms and flopped onto the bed.
"Come now, Teddy," She said, mouth moving slightly out of synch with her strong German accent. "You are a stuffed animal, a child's toy. You do not grow, you stay the same size. Logically, if you think that this happened, this becoming a giant, it must be a dream."
"It wasn't a dream!" Teddy shrieked at Dr. Sock, bunching his paws into fists. "It was real!"
Dr. Sock pulled back a bit, her fabric mouth puckering with concern. "But you must admit that logically-"
Teddy picked up the xylophone and threw it across the room. "I'M A TEDDY BEAR! I DON'T DO LOGIC!"
Dr. Sock nodded. "Ah. Yes. Exactly so."
Teddy tilted his head, then turned his shiny eyes down towards his feet. His head felt like it should itch so he scratched it.
"I think that is enough progress for the day."
-
Teddy scratched at his band-aids. It was funny that they itched now, but this whole place was loopy.
He watched as the attendants brought the turtle back to the main room, hidden deep inside his shell. The thing in the box had come out; it was an alligator, clutching a pillow and looking paranoid. The purple hippo kept banging her blocks together.
The sheep growled. Teddy stayed far away from the sheep.
"You're all frigging nuts," muttered Teddy, scratching his head and wondering why he was here.
-
The glowing box shows him the world, the whole world outside of the house and yard and store and park, the world of grown-ups. He learns words from the glowing box; 'genocide', 'rape', 'molestation', 'wildfire', 'terrorism', 'murder'. Hate and fear and misery. Firelight from villages burning a world away shine off his eyes. People die and kill and die and kill and die.
Audrey is coming.
-
Teddy huddles on the bed, a small ball of traumatized plush.
"What did you see, in the glowing box?"
"Awful things. Fighting, people being mean to each other. Fire. Flood. All over the whole world, grown-ups being mean to each other, being mean to kids. Hurting kids."
"How did that make you feel?"
"It made me mad!" Teddy clenched a stuffed fist on the crisp white sheet of the bed. "It's not nice to hit, and this, they..." Teddy trailed off, remembering things the glowing box had shown that were so much worse than hitting, things he didn't know or want to find the words for. "It made me mad. It made me want to do something about it."
"But you didn't?"
"Audrey said. I'm for tea parties. I'm her bear. So all I could do was tea parties. Mean, bad, rotten things people were doing to each other and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't even try. Tea parties."
"Why did you want to stop it?"
"Because it was wrong! It's bad to hit! It's bad for people to hurt each other!"
"Is that the only reason?"
"...because. I wanted to stop it, so Audrey wouldn't have to- So she..."
"So she would be safe?"
"Yeah. I guess."
"It is a natural impulse, for a teddy bear. You want your child to be safe."
Teddy shrugged. "Of course I do."
"Why do you have a bandage on your head, Teddy?"
-
The hippo had stopped banging the blocks together, maybe they'd taken them away from her. Her zippered mouth was held shut by a safety pin now, and her stubby arms were clamped over it. The turtle had come all the way out of his shell, and was sitting on it now, crying his way through a box of tissues.
Teddy scratched at his band-aids some more and wondered if the toys here all had kids at home like Audrey.
-
Tea parties. People are dying. Tea parties. Audrey is alone. Someone could hurt her if she's alone. She needs to be protected. Tea parties. He wants to make them all stop. The glowing box never stops; he's watched it, all through the night and day, and it never stops. Grown-ups never stop. War never stops. Fire never stops. He has to protect her. He's big now, he can do something. He can.
Tea parties.
Teddy soaks his fluff with the smelly liquid he sees the people in the glowing box drinking. it doesn't help.
-
"Audrey's parents, they came back, yes?"
Teddy nodded. "After a while. They went to Bali, but they came back."
"So they can protect Audrey now. You don't need to."
"I guess," said Teddy, slumping.
"But you still have the band-aids on your head, Teddy."
Teddy scratched his head. "I don't think- Her parents, I don't think they can stop the stuff I saw."
Dr. Sock said nothing.
"I don't think they can protect her from it. Not really."
"And if they can't, then how do you think you can?"
"I don't know," Teddy moaned, slumping forward, paws on his head. "I don't know. My head hurts."
"Do you feel pain?"
"No, of course not," Teddy muttered miserably into his plush knees. "Teddies don't feel pain. But it hurts anyway."
"Why do you think it hurts, Teddy?"
"I don't know!"
-
Teddy sat huddled in the corner under the 'no nooses' sign and watched the turtle - his shell back on but different-colored now - walk to the door. The green light over it flashed and the turtle walked away.
The sheep snarled. Teddy hid his face in his paws and rocked back and forth.
-
Strangers come.
Strangers make Audrey go away. They leave Teddy alone with his bottles and the glowing box.
Audrey's gone. She's out in the world; he can't protect her. He never could.
He doesn't want to see the glowing box anymore. He doesn't want to see Audrey in there. But even after he makes the box shut up, it doesn't. It's in his head, and everything he's seen and heard now features Audrey. Hurt, scared, hurting, angry, dying, killing. He doesn't want to see it, but it won't stop. He can't make it stop.
The glowing box also taught him what a gun does.
He doesn't know how he gets the gun.
He hears the gun fire. He senses the passage of the bullet, smells his own scorched cotton fluff, but the pain he can't feel just gets worse. Everything gets worse.
He can't stop any of it. Audrey is still gone.
-
"You couldn't stop it."
"No."
"Not in the world or in your own mind."
"No. I tried. I..."
"Why do you still have the bandage on?"
"My head hurts. More than anything."
"Why does it still hurt, Teddy?"
"Because I can't stop it. No one can. Her parents can't stop it. They left her alone. I can't protect her, and..."
"You can't keep her safe."
Teddy huddled in misery. "No."
"And you can't keep her from growing up. From becoming a part of that world."
Teddy rocked back and forth. "No. No, I can't."
-
He doesn't know how, but he is his normal size again.
He has to hide it, he has to hide what he did.
He breaks the teddy rules again and thumps down the endless hallway to the bathroom. Clambers up, up to the medicine cabinet, finds the band-aids and cotton balls. He can't find the place he needs to hide, can't find where his head hurts so much. He hears the car pull into the driveway, Audrey's voice. He puts the band-aids as far back on his head as he can reach, padding them with cotton to hide the hole he's sure is there, even though he can't see or feel it.
He has it all trapped inside now, all the bad things from the glowing box. Maybe if he can keep it all trapped in his head, inside himself, Audrey will never know any of it.
He hears the front door open, Audrey's feet on the stairs, and lets himself go inanimate, falling off the bathroom counter down, down...
-
"Audrey's parents went away. You became aware of a wider world; the world of grown-ups. It's a scary, confusing world, one that no toy or child should need to face. You tried to face it, in your dreams."
"It wasn't a...," Teddy slumped on the bed. "Whatever."
"It was an awareness of a wider world, but you are not equipped to deal with these things. You are a child's toy, you support the child. We have seen this a great many times."
Teddy scratched his band-aids and stared at his feet.
"The thing which you have forgotten, is that you are a toy. You are not made or equipped to solve the problems of the world. It is not your destiny."
Teddy snorted. "Yeah. My destiny is tea parties."
"Look beyond the tea, Teddy, to what a tea party is. It is the time you spend with your child. Children have problems, sometimes small problems which seem big to them because they are small, sometimes problems even an adult should not face."
"Don't I know it. You ever see something called 'Dateline NBC'?"
Dr. Sock rumpled her mouth. "What you do, as a teddy bear, is very important. You support the child. The child becomes the adult. And the adult works to solve the problems of the world."
"So..." Teddy tilted his head to the side, thinking, "the mean people in the glowing box... never had teddy bears?"
"It is not so simple as that."
"Then why do they do stuff like that?
"That's not for me to say, nor for you to know. It's too much for such a small bear."
"I was bigger once," Teddy muttered.
Dr. Sock's mouth rumpled into a grimace. "Rather than trying to be a bigger bear to withstand the bigger problems of the adult world, it is your job to be just a small bear, to be the soft thing that your child whispers secrets to, and dries her tears on, to be something that never judges her, something that will always be her friend."
Teddy tilted his head. "Hunh. That's all?"
"You don't need to solve the world's problems. All you need to do is be there for your Kind, your child, when she needs you. That is all there is, and that is the most important duty there can be."
Teddy nodded slowly, and noticed that for the first time since the 'getting big' incident, his head didn't hurt or itch or anything. He reached up and peeled the band-aids and cotton ball from the back of his head and held them in his paw, looking at them quizzically. Bits of his own plush fur stuck to the sticky parts.
Why had he needed these? There was nothing wrong with his head. Not really.
He dropped the band-aids and cotton as he hopped off the examination room bed. Dr. Sock put down her clipboard and watched Teddy as he headed through the room, past the alligator and the hippo and the sheep, to the door with the green light flashing over it, and through.
-
Audrey opened the box, and light flooded in.
"Teddy! You're back! I missed you!"
Teddy flopped against Audrey's shoulder as she squashed him tightly.
He was home, and Audrey was safe - for now, if not forever. Truly, nothing else mattered.
- - -
Post A/N: The playlist for this fic is... bizarre. And contains far more Linkin Park than any teddy bear should listen to.